The term or sanjin, as understood in
Japanese folklore, has come to be applied to a group, some scholars claim,
[Raja, 556.] of ancient, marginalized people, dating back to some unknown date during the
Jōmon period
The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between 6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...
of the
history of Japan
The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC when new inven ...
.
[Konagaya, 47.]
The term itself has been translated as "
Mountain People",
or as
Dickins
Dickins is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Alan Dickins, Arundel Herald of Arms Extraordinary
*Barry Dickins (born 1949), Australian author, artist and playwright
*Bruce Dickins FBA (1889–1978), Elrington and Bosworth Profes ...
interprets the word as "Woodsman", but there is more to it than that. It is from texts recorded by historian
Kunio Yanagita that introduced, through their
legends and
tales
Tales may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Tales'' (album), a 1995 album by Marcus Miller
* ''Tales'' (film), a 2014 Iranian film
* ''Tales'' (TV series), an American television series
* ''Tales'' (video game), a 2016 point-and-click adventure ...
, of the concept of being
spirited away into
Japanese popular culture.
Tono Monogatari
According to Yanagita, the Yamabito were "descendants of a real, separate aboriginal race of people who were long ago forced into the mountains by the Japanese who then populated the plains" during the Jōmon period.
Yanagita wrote down these folktales in the book ''Tono Monogatari'', though as author Sadler notes:
Kamikakushi
One of the concepts Yanagita presents in ''Tono Monogatari'' is that of, literally, being ''spirited away'', or
kamikakushi
In English, to "spirit away" means to remove without anyone's noticing.
In Japanese folklore, spiriting away (Japanese: ''Kamikakushi'' ( 神隠し), ) refers to the mysterious disappearance or death of a person, after they had angered the gods ...
. As author Sadler relates:
The Yamabito debate
The stories found within ''Tono Monogatari'' are not without their detractors.
Minakata Kumagusu
was a Japanese author, biologist, naturalist and ethnologist.
Biography
Minakata was born in Wakayama, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. In 1883, he moved to Tokyo, where he entered the preparatory school '' Kyōryū Gakkō''. The headmaster of ...
was highly critical of Yangita's research, ''"heaping severe criticism and ridicule on belief that ... the Yamabito ever existed."''
According to records, between 1915–1916,
[Figal,139.] the two scholars exchanged letters debating the existence of the Yamabito. In one famous letter, dated December, 1916, Minakata makes the following claim that while working with an assistant in the
Wakayama region of Japan:
Notes
{{Reflist, 32em
References
Dickins , Frederick Victor. ''Primitive & Mediaeval Japanese Texts, Transliterated into Roman, with Introductions, Notes, and Glossaries''. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1906.*Figal, Gerald A. ''Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan''. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1999.
*Foster, Michael Dylan. ''Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Konagaya, Hideyo. "''Yamabito'': From Ethnology to Japanese Folklore Studies". ''The Folklore Historian: Journal of the Folklore and History Section of the American Folklore Society'', Vol. 20, 2003: 47-59. Terre Haute: Indiana State University, 2003.*Raja, Vijaya. ''The Mountain People Debate.'' ''Japanese Antiquity'', Vol. 73, 1981.
Sadler, A. W. "The Spirit-Captives of Japan's North Country: Nineteenth Century Narratives of the ''Kamikakushi''". ''Asian Folklore Studies'', Vol. 46, 1987: 217-226. Nagoya: Nanzan University, 2003.*Yangita, Kunio. ''The Legends of Tono.'' Translated with an Introduction by Ronald A. Morse. Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1975.
Japanese legendary creatures